


Loyalty

by HSR (helena_s_renn)



Category: Sharpe - All Media Types, Sharpe Series - Bernard Cornwell
Genre: Guard Duty, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-01
Updated: 2011-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24484018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/HSR
Summary: An overview of the Sharper history and relationship, but it has a happy ending, if a bit angsty.
Relationships: Patrick Harper/Richard Sharpe
Kudos: 2





	Loyalty

The Riflemen were the sort of men who were used to hardship, as they’d known it their entire lives. Nearly all came from the lowest rungs of society, signed up for the King’s shilling to keep out of gaol or worse. Sharpe, being no exception, had had his own troubles with the comforts allowed an officer. As a sergeant, he hadn’t fully comprehended, because it was no unusual thing for a promising man of the rank and file to be promoted above his fellows one step to do the real work of running a regiment. The higher he went, the more out of his depth he felt.

Sharpe’s promotions had always been almost grudging, following acts of extreme, stupid, desperate bravery. That side of himself was the pendulum swing from the other truth. As an Englishman, he felt a kind of shame for resorting to the practice of those heathen French. It was said that all Frenchmen felt a twisted desire for the flesh of another man, something for which God would surely strike them down. His whole adult life, Sharpe had gone to the whores with a portion of his pay, and he could bloody well do the deed, too, thank his ever-randy nature for that. Refined ladies always caught his eye. In honesty, it was the want of what he could not have at work there, and his wish to prove he was not inferior, no matter where he came from or whose get he was.

Patrick Harper’s early conversion to loyalty was likely his only saving grace. No matter what, the Irishman was at his side, or at his back. For his own part, Sharpe would do anything he had to preserve that arrangement. Hadn’t he armed the man himself for his own defense? A whole year’s pay, worth every pence. That seven-barreled rifle had seen him safe from enemy and two-faced friend alike.

Patrick, he’d had a sense, was tempted by his own demons. There had never been an improper word. It was in the instant loyalty, and no one could ever say Sharpe was not suspicious of any and all. As it turned out, two years into their acquaintance, Harper had more or less admitted, three-fourths through a bottle of Christmas rum, that his was wiry and blond with a harsh Northern accent, a fecking Englishman to boot, and need he repeat, a man? He’d have cried himself to sleep, emotions all afoot as he always got deep in his cups, had Sharpe not dragged him away on the excuse of sobering him up in a nearby creek and shown him what being a man’s man was really about.

Patrick received his education, drunk though he was, with thanks. It was furtiveness and gun oil, stifled cries and something like wonder, at the end. The next night, he had more or less turned the tables. While Sharpe fought him about it – he had to, in his position – it had made his ‘defeat’ that much sweeter and their understanding was set. His uniform had covered the bites and scratches till they healed; no one saw. What man would be taking off his kit in the dead of winter, anyway?

They couldn’t possibly be together every second of every day. It would have been very unwise, in fact. Four years later now and Sharpe was upjumped (as the gentlemen officers would have it) from Lieutenant to Major some months prior, Sharpe could count the encounters with his second-in-command that had ended with the mutual satisfaction of both of them properly naked in a double bed on somewhat less than two hands. Sometimes it was torture, knowing that Patrick shared his tent and his body with Ramona. If the wind was blowing in the right direction, he could hear the susurrations and sighs that meant his Sergeant’s wife would be happy and humming at her work the next day. Perhaps, Sharpe reflected, he should marry. The less suspicion the better. It might even take the edge off his ever-present _need._

They were on watch together tonight. The foothills were quiet, here in a remote corner of northern Spain. Hidden in brush cover high in a ravine, one of three approaches the stronghold they had recaptured some days previous, Sharpe had kept his peace for nearly two hours now, with two remaining until the changing of the watch. Patrick’s eyes glittered in the dark, his night vision better even than Hagman’s.

“What’s on your mind tonight, Richard?” No one else called him by his given name on a regular basis. In that, Patrick owned him.

“How quiet it is.” Sharpe kept his voice at just above a whisper. Something out there in the woods felt watchful. His life would have ended a long time ago if not for his instincts; he knew better than to ignore them. “What do you think is out there?”

“Oh, it’s that time of year.” The Irishman did not elaborate for some minutes. “The dead walk abroad on nights like this. Maybe not now, but once, this place had some tremendous battles, and there was bad blood. It’s... unquiet.”

The hairs rose on the back of Sharpe’s neck. It was as if Harper had given voice to those things beyond his ken. “’Tis.”

“Me mam filled us full of all manner of stories when we were young,” he went on. “Wailing ghosts, phantasms, spirits of vengeful dead who died wrongly who would scare a person to death and take them over, if one did not watch and pray properly. And then, the worst, the--”

Sharpe cut him off. “The bog devils.” He bit back a laugh. This was something of a racial slur, a high insult coming from anyone else. It was also his pet name, and code word between them. Patrick had set it up, and he had only responded in kind.

“Aye, that, of course. Well, there is devilry about tonight, there is.”

“You really believe that?” Sharpe had never believed in any sort of creed, regardless of what they’d tried to force down his throat in his orphanage years.

“’Course I do, may God strike me down if I don’t.” Patrick cast a watchful eye at the full moon coming up to light the sky, and then turned to Sharpe. “’Course, He might just strike me down anyway. Thanks to your narrow arse.”

Because he’d told him, tongue loosened once in post-orgasmic languor, Sharpe was well aware of the drawing power of his backside, with or without his green trews, to Patrick Harper.

“Well then, you’d better be calling on Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Patrick. I knew of a place in the back of the cellars where no one goes. Once we get out of this forsaken piece of hill, you’ll be powerless to resist meh.”

“True enough.” For as devout of a man as he was on the one hand, there was no artifice on either side of the narrow line for Patrick. To his mind, love was love. And he did love his Sharpe. It was to his officer to wrangle out the mysteries of the spirit and the flesh, if such was his wont.

The remainder of the watch was just as quiet. As much as he would have liked to touch or more, Sharpe did not, for it would be unseemly to be caught out or heavens forbid, be crept up on unawares in a state of distraction. As the night grew old, fog rose up out of the valley, dampening their clothes. If he’d drawn anyone else to stand watch with, he’d have been longing for his tent, his bedroll, and sleep. The big man beside him was not distracting, but put his subconscious mind to other things. Some time later, Harris and Cooper crept out to relieve them, and he and Harper double-timed it back up to the fortress. The report could wait a short while. The longing and urgency could not.

But for special occasions where their privacy was assured, the two men had given over the inevitability of expressing their physical love standing up, mating like animals, one spearing into the other while helping the bottom man along with his hand. Usually it was Harper who stood stud, and that night was no different. No one saw them there, living nor dead. No deity or devil cared. By the very act, Harper pounded his loyalty deep into Richard’s willing body, and milked from him every drop of fidelity in return. In some far-off time and place, they’d have been brothers of the most intimate sort. In the black of the root cellar, trousers lowered only just enough, cheek to the wall and Patrick’s big fist bringing him to a sorely-needed end, Richard could only imagine. But then, he’d imagined his whole life, up to this point, so who knew.

Fin.


End file.
